The evacuation plan sends Ukrainians through Russia and Belarus before they can reach home soil, and no international monitors will be watching.
By EEW Magazine Online Editors
The European Commission headquarters in Brussels on Sept. 28, 2026. (Daniel Gnap/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
A six-day humanitarian truce in Russian-occupied Oleshky held for a third day Thursday. Ukrainian officials said the first humanitarian shipment was planned to reach the city Friday as crews cleared mines from the roads leading in. Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman and chief negotiator, said the ceasefire had lasted 54 hours without a single violation.
His Russian counterpart, Yana Lantratova, said Russian military engineers were demining those roads to prepare safe passage for the convoy, the Associated Press reported. An estimated 1,700 to 2,000 people remain in the southern Ukrainian city, most of them elderly, after months of worsening shortages of food, medicine and clean water.
The agreement, which the White House says first lady Melania Trump brokered, took effect early Tuesday and runs through Sunday night. The White House announced the agreement Oct. 23 with a later start date, and Lubinets said the same day that it would begin two days sooner. The zone has since been widened beyond Oleshky to give aid convoys safe passage through parts of the Kherson region.
First lady Melania Trump speaks in the Grand Foyer of the White House on Oct. 10, 2025, announcing an open channel of communication with Russian President Vladimir Putin to reunite Ukrainian children with their families. The White House says she used that channel to negotiate the Oleshky ceasefire. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Oleshky sits across the Dnipro River from the Ukrainian-held city of Kherson and has been occupied since the opening days of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. About 24,000 people lived there before the war. The White House estimates that about 50 children are among those who remain, though no formal count has been taken since 2022. It also says roughly 90% of the city’s territory flooded after the 2023 destruction of the Kakhovka Dam.
The agreement calls for aid deliveries first, followed by safe departure for anyone who wants to leave. Melania Trump said residents would be taken to their preferred destination and that she expected some to choose Russia and some Ukraine. Pages of the deal, signed by Lubinets and Lantratova and published by Fox News, send residents who choose Ukraine to an airport in Anapa, Russia, and then on a Russian military aircraft to Gomel, Belarus.
The Institute for the Study of War noted that the agreement does not say how evacuees would get from Belarus to Ukrainian-held territory, and said it remained unclear whether residents would have a genuine, uncoerced choice.
Who will verify that choice is an open question. The White House said an American media organization would accompany the Russian and Ukrainian teams to document the process. The first lady’s senior adviser, Marc Beckman, said that organization is Newsmax, the conservative cable network. Lubinets said U.S. representatives would also monitor whether each side keeps its commitments.
Critics quoted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty noted that the deal makes no provision for independent monitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross or the United Nations to oversee the evacuation.
In 2022, Russian forces forcibly transferred Ukrainian civilians fleeing Mariupol to Russia and Russian-occupied territory, many of whom had wanted to reach Ukrainian-controlled areas, Human Rights Watch documented. On Wednesday, the bipartisan Congressional Ukraine Caucus welcomed the ceasefire and credited the first lady’s work. It also raised alarm over reports that Russian authorities were keeping Oleshky residents from evacuating to Ukrainian-controlled territory. Lubinets has said some residents want to stay and that authorities will try to keep aid flowing to them.
Across the river in Kherson, a regional capital that has absorbed near-daily Russian drone and artillery fire since Ukrainian forces retook it in November 2022, the pause has brought a rare quiet.
A man fishes on the Dnipro River in Kyiv as smoke rises over a residential area after Russian strikes on Sept. 8, 2026. (Viktor Fridshon/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
On Wednesday, residents walked their dogs without glancing at the sky, and shops and cafes served customers beneath anti-drone nets strung over the main roads, Reuters reported. Kiosk owner Oleksandra Kosenko said her customer count had nearly doubled, to about 50.
Regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin reported no shelling or strikes on civilian infrastructure over the previous day.
The White House says the first lady initiated the talks and worked directly with Russian and Ukrainian leadership to set the terms, and Lubinets publicly thanked her and her team. Pope Leo XIV also pressed for the truce. He urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a humanitarian ceasefire in an Oct. 16 phone call, made while he was recovering from lung surgery. Three days later he raised Oleshky with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Vatican said.
The truce covers only the Oleshky operation and the routes that serve it. Ukraine said Russia fired 112 drones at targets across the country overnight. On Thursday morning, a Russian jet-powered drone hit the railway station in the central city of Dnipro as a passenger train bound for Zaporizhzhia stood at the platform. At least 13 people were killed and 13 wounded, four of them in grave condition, including a child, according to regional officials.
The Oleshky agreement is far narrower than the energy ceasefire President Donald Trump announced Oct. 11. Russian strikes on Ukrainian power facilities continued within hours. After a three-day pause, Ukrainian drones struck a refinery in Russia’s Ryazan region on Oct. 15. Trump’s declared ceasefire never produced a sustained halt.
The United States is pressing for broader talks. Zelenskyy said Wednesday he hoped negotiators from Ukraine, Russia and the United States would meet in Abu Dhabi between Nov. 6 and Nov. 10, and he wants European partners at the table. A Kremlin foreign policy aide has linked the timing to the conflict in the Middle East, casting doubt on that schedule.
No comprehensive agreement to end the war has been reached, and disputes over territory and security remain unresolved.
Aid trucks are due in Oleshky on Friday, and the ceasefire is set to expire Sunday night. Lubinets has said the operation could become a model for future humanitarian missions.
In Kherson, Kosenko told Reuters she worries the fighting could return at any moment. “If it stays this way,” she said, “it would be really wonderful.”